The cold metal kissed her wrist. Her fingertips slipped over the round bobbles, counting them unconsciously. Her eyes were trained on the young blonde man next to her, her lips pulled up in a smile, but her mind was wrapped about the rise and fall of pressed metal links warming upon her skin.
The roar of the engine was like music to her ears. Her eyes and her smile left the boy and she left his side. She ran to the man returned home, the fellow that always seemed to be on her mind. She hugged him close and he looked as good as she remembered, smelled just as wonderful, but there was distance there and as the redheaded siren she'd grown to admire swanned into the room, she knew to back away. She'd seen that part of his mind and she wasn't playing in that field just yet. Besides... Logan was still trying to defrost his hand.
Bobby was fun, Bobby was gentle and ever so trusting. He was security and safeness.
Logan was wild and firm and fleeting, an animal that was afraid to be close. Slowly, so slowly, he slipped into their lives, right into the fold, until he was part of the grain. He bled for the cause, bled for them. He was one of them, and she knew he would stay.
She wished she could enjoy it. A solemness hung in the air, dampening the happiness that used to abound the beautiful wood-decked halls. All their eyes turned away from Scott as he walked through the halls. Even Logan seemed to bid him space. That's because he knew, just as everyone knew. Scott and Jean were more than hot breaths and rushing hormones. They were more than stolen glances and guilty moments. It was a foundation of rock that would withstand anything. Anyone with eyes could see how, without that rock, Scott was going to fall down.
She was a little surprised at herself, that during all that happened, during all the worry and the fear, that she wasn't falling apart like that. Funny thing was, she'd done her falling apart. She'd counted the bobbles on the chain a thousand times. Even when she gripped the shaking controls of the Blackbird, even when death looked her right in the eye, she knew Logan would come back, they'd be okay, and that they'd both be going home. It didn't worry her.
There was something there that was stronger than the fretful crush it all started as, and it was growing steadily inside of her. Maybe she could call it a rock one day - she wasn't sure. All she knew was that she didn't feel anything like it with Bobby, and that bothered her, but not too much. She was still in love and laughing and enjoying herself. In the back of her mind was the looming thought that it wasn't really going to last. One day they'd outgrow each other, talk to each other in nervous tones, wonder how it all started, feel a pang of nostalgia that things weren't quite the way they used to be, and because of that they didn't fit together anymore.
She knew where she fit. She knew it the day it all started, and she knew he needed his time, and she needed hers. She held onto the tag, wrapped it around her wrist, fingered it and thought of him, the chain dangling in her hands, treasured and loved like a strange looking rosary. She gave it back because she thought he needed it. He looked at her, and she swore he almost looked angry. Perhaps he didn't understand.
He must have quickly forgotten the sentimental significance of them. He came back from the ice and the cold and didn't have them on. She found out from the child he had in his arms that he'd ripped them off. They were now under Alkalai Lake.
Still, she wasn't bothered, she wasn't worried. Since that day he loped about the Mansion, hazel eyes downcast and sullen. It was nothing compared to the pain in Scott's features. Logan looked like his favourite pet of ten years had died. Scott looked like he didn't know how to live. He would spend his time alone, or in special spots that nobody understood the importance of but him. Logan liked to sit with her in the kitchen, drinking beer from the bar-fridge in his room and bitching about whatever mission he'd been on, trying to keep his mind off things that upset him. It wasn't like when it all started. She wasn't a lost child and he wasn't her hero. She was now a best friend and he was a comrade. That brought him more security than she knew, though she could tell just a little.
The dog-tag on the bobble-chain lay abandoned under the lake, but she didn't need them. They didn't need them. What they had was stronger than tin chains and stronger than stone.
One day, she knew, it would be the strongest thing of all, and like Scott and Jean, not even death could break it.
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Story Notes:
This is sort of a post-movie thought piece. It just came to me whilst I was playing with my dog-tags from the first movie merchandise run.